


A Door Once Opened

by whatwecan



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode Fix-It: s02e04 The Girl in the Fireplace, Episode Rewrite: s02e04 The Girl in the Fireplace, Episode: s02e04 The Girl in the Fireplace, F/M, Oral Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-20
Packaged: 2018-08-16 11:27:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 8,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8100673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatwecan/pseuds/whatwecan
Summary: To walk through the mind of another is a seductive alluring experience.  But beware of what you may find there.





	1. The Doctor's Mind

Jeanne Antoinette Poisson otherwise known as Madame de Pompadour: the most lovely, most accomplished woman in all of France. 

She’d been trained in the art of seduction, could bring any man to his knees before her, she thought she knew all there was to know about the pleasures that two people could find in each other.

But this… this was exquisite. To walk inside another’s mind to live their memories their most intimate secret thoughts. Reinette was quite sure she had never experienced quite such a thrill with a man.  
And what a man! The grand cavernous hallways of his mind stretched out in every direction, larger and emptier than Versailles on a fete day. He was not yet aware she’d slipped in, and for a while at least Reinette wanted to make sure it stayed that way.

From somewhere outside the halls she heard his voice echoing.

“If there’s anything you don’t want me to see just imagine a door and close it…”

There was a heavy wooden door right in front of her, it’s deadbolts hung open and a small shaft of warm light poured through the crack. Inside she could hear laughter.

Concentrating once again on her own mind, Reinette brought up a rather scandalous memory of Charles and her on the balcony together. That should distract him, at least for a little while.

Silently, she pulled open the door and stepped inside. The room was tiny. Shockingly so after the vastness of the corridor that led to it. There was barely enough room for the small hearth that flickered golden light from one end and the plush sofa that was set in front of it. From her vantage point behind them Reinette could see the Doctor, his head pooled on a blonde woman’s breast and a soft relaxed smile playing on his lips. 

Blonde. Reinette smiled in self-satisfaction. He’d already fallen for her.

The Doctor spoke from his soft pillow gesticulating animatedly.

“… and as soon as it hit the ground it just exploded. Poof.”

His arms went wide.

The blonde gasped. “No!”

“Yes! It was everywhere, on the walls, the drapes, little tiny bits stuck in the carpets. And I was being so careful too!”

The blonde tilted her head back in laughter, her eyes sparkling with happiness and firelight. Reinette’s stomach dropped. It wasn’t her, but rather the short haired woman who had accompanied him. Her hands were absentmindedly running through the Doctor’s hair and the Doctor’s own laughter stuttered into a contented mewl as she hit a spot behind his ear.

When he spoke again his voice was husky.

“I wish… I wish you had been there. You always stop me if I go too far.”

Rose’s hand stilled, save her one rebellious index finger which, as if it had a mind of it’s own, stole a slow caress over the shell of his ear.

The Doctor twisted his body, lifting himself up, the palms of his hands now planted against the arms of the sofa on either side of Rose. A log cracked and shifted in the fire. They were silent now, brown eyes wordlessly questioning brown eyes, lips centimeters apart.

“Just… stop me Rose… if I go to far.”

The moment shattered like a crystal glass. The one that followed it a broken, shining jumble of contrasts. Their lips met with a soft desperation, their hips pressed against each other, their legs twined and grasping. 

They each made love to the other as one might hold a tiny sparrow. Clutch it too tight and you crush it’s sweet tremulous song, too loose and it’s lost to the wide blue sky.

Backing slowly out of the room, a board creaked below Reinette’s feet. The Doctor’s arms tightened around his beloved and they both turned.

“Oi! What are you doing here?”

Reinette turned and ran out of the room. Desperately calling up another dirty memory to distract the Doctor in her mind.


	2. Another Room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reinette continues her trip through the doors of the Doctor’s mind.

Reinette Poisson stumbled back into the corridor of the Doctor’s mind. She was shaken, but she held her head high. This was not the first time one of her lovers had been taken with another woman. It was a challenge true, but the kind of challenge to which she rarely saw defeat. 

Tentatively she made her way down the corridor searching for a memory or desire she could use to woo him.   
She opened another door, carefully lifting the golden padlock that held shut it’s flimsy blue portal. 

Stepping inside, Reinette lifted her arm to shield her eyes with the back of her hand. Light. There was shining light everywhere, it twinkled and glittered like a thousand stars, like a secret message.

In the center of the room stood Rose, nude save the golden flowing light that wound around her like a translucent gauze shift. She was glowing and radiant, reminding Reinette of one of the old master paintings of Aphrodite she had seen at the palace. 

Kneeling at her feet, pressing worshipful kisses to her hip was a man, also nude, with short cropped hair and rather large ears. 

Jeanette smirked. The Doctor’s lover had not been faithful to him.

Reverently, the man ran his large hands up and down Rose’s pale exposed skin, nuzzling and kissing her, carefully making his way to her downy curls. Rose’s head fell back as he found her center. Drowned out by her moans of pleasure, it took a while for Reinette to realize that in between kisses and caresses, the man was mumbling a soft plea.

“Give her back to me.”

His hands reached up to search out Rose’s, twining his fingers through hers, using their linked palms to gently guide the goddess down to his side.

“Please, give her back to me.”

He laid her on her back atop a wide spread leather jacket. Laying his own body beside her the man cradled her cheeks in his large palms, his lips meeting hers in a soft kiss. The light that suffused the room intensified in the space between them, whipping through Rose’s hair and bringing a look of desperation to the lanky man’s face.

He broke the kiss, resting his forehead against hers.

“Give her back to me. I’ll do anything, just please, give me my Rose.”

His voice was a broken sob, thick with fear, and loneliness, and lust.

Rose wrapped a leg around him, stroking a pointed toe along his long leg. Her lips trailed soft kisses along his jaw, her hands stroking him and soothing him, guiding him to position himself above her. Rienette could see his need, long and hard despite the panic in his eyes.

Rose’s hand moved to cup his cheek, her eyes full of love and starlight, a tear trickling down her cheek.

“My Doctor. I’ll never leave you.”

They made love gently and passionately, like two beings torn from the same primordial cloth, coming together again in ecstasy and completion. 

Reinette turned away. She could see it now. The sharp featured man with the shorn hair was the Doctor. Somehow, inexplicably with a different face, but on it the same expression when he looked at Rose. 

Closing the door softly behind her Reinette stepped back into the corridor. The Doctor’s voice floating in from outside.

“How old are you?”

So many doors, they reached back as far as the eye could see. Perhaps he could be distracted by flirtation. Carefully Reinette made her way through the Doctor’s mind, searching for a desire or memory she could use… one that wasn’t tied to Rose.


	3. Questing Deeper

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reinette Poisson takes a stroll through the Doctor’s mind and discovers he’s a bit obsessed. Just a bit.

Hundreds and thousands of doors, and behind them all was Rose.  
Rose in a small damp cupboard, the British flag across her chest. She makes a thinly veiled joke about dancing and this time he takes her up on the promise in her eyes. 

He’s pressing her against the wall lips locked to the ivory patch of skin below her neck, before it occurs to him that she’s wanted this for a very long time. Nearly as long as he has judging by the wild ferocious way she’s dragging her fingertips along his scalp.

They’re nearly in each other’s pants by the time an astonished and very much intrigued Jack Harkness manages to teleport them onboard his ship. 

Her ridiculous shirt is lost to history.

Behind another door and they lay together on the mossy floor of a small grotto. The only sound the chirping of birds and the splashing of the water on the rocks behind them. The bright riotous green of the new leaves is painted pink and yellow by the dawn light streaming through the trees. 

The Doctor’s hands rest on the soft swell of Rose’s stomach. 

“I never thought it was possible. It shouldn’t be possible…”

There are tears on both their faces. Rose swipes at hers with the magenta sleeve of her sweatshirt. 

“Bloody hormones, look at me, I’m worse than you. We’re supposed to be happy Doctor.”

The Doctor rucks up Rose’s shirt and drops a pair of kisses against Rose’s navel. One for each his hearts. The ones fluttering overtime in his chest completely superfluous, forgotten. He smiles against her soft skin.

“Oh Rose, I’ve never been so happy.”

Door after door after door and Reinette has just about given up hope when she finally finds it. Tucked in the back of the hallway, tall and crimson.

She steps inside.

A tall stern looking man in flowing scarlet robes towers over a young boy. 

“You will give it to me this instant.”

Reluctantly the child hands over a small box, in it is a furry creature, long eared and gentle eyed, like a cottontail but the size of a small mouse. The child eyes his stolen prize longingly, he’s not quite ready to give up hope.

“But it’s not fair Koschei just wants him for himself but I found him!”

The tall man steps towards the sole window in the stone room turning the latch and throwing it open wide. Silver trees glint in the midday sun and a dry heat rushes in. 

“Theta, you know full well there are no pets allowed in the Academy. I would not want to have to mark this infraction on your already long record.”

And with that the man upturns the box out the window, the small creature leaping out and scampering away into the wizened dry shrubbery.

Seeing the tears in the young childs eyes the man softens for a moment, resting a hand on his shoulder before hastily leaving the room.

Letting his face fall into his hands the boy’s tears now flowed unimpeded.

“Arthur wasn’t a pet… he was my friend.”

Reinette smiles, silently backing out of the memory, and back down the corridor. This is exactly what she needs. Soon she would be the uncrowned queen of France, and of the Doctor’s heart as well.

Artfully she pulls a portion of her mind back to herself, and speaks with a quiver of vulnerability.

“Oh such a lonely childhood…"


	4. A Rather Alluring Dance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reinette and the Doctor finally dance and she is surprised by a certain part of the Doctor’s anatomy.

As Reinette pulled herself from the Doctor’s mind there was absolutely one thing of which she was certain. 

The Doctor had not yet… what was that word they used? Ahh, yes “danced” with his beloved Rose. had not danced with anyone in quite some time, and his previous experiences seemed awfully sterile and… solitary.

“So lonely… so very, very lonely.”  
It was hardly the first time Reinette had deflowered a man. All it took was a firm hand and a little confidence.

“Dance with me.”

They were always so ripe for the plucking. The Doctor of course, dazed by the sudden realization that she’d been inside him in the most intimate way already, was no exception. 

With a seductive smirk Reinette led the Doctor out of the small sitting room and down the palace halls towards her bedchamber. Despite his earlier protestations she could tell he was beginning to get excited by the little double bounce in his step as they made their way through the marble halls. Reinette smiled over her shoulder at him through artfully lowered lashes. 

“Pray tell me Doctor, did you find your journey through my mind stimulating?”

The Doctor shot her a wide flirty grin.

“Your mind, my dear Reinette is most informative.”

Taking the lead, the Doctor bounded along, tugging her hand with all the enthusiasm of Fan Fan’s squat little papillon. Reinette was so caught up in his excitement that it wasn’t until the last minute she realized he’d followed the low dulcet strains of the minuet as it drifted out from the ballroom. 

—

The celestial gold lacquered arches of the Versailles grand ballroom floated almost weightlessly above the throng of brightly festooned courtiers, the loft of empty space overhead a stark contrast to the crush of sweaty bodies below. A thin floral scent of perfume hung in the humid air, doing little to cover up the sour ferment of so much human flesh.

Reinette knew each of them by name, had drawn out many of their secrets, and their grasping low motivations. She could play the room like a clavichord if she had to, but she’d rather had the Doctor to herself in the privacy of her own chamber. 

Still, as he turned to her with a proficient if not graceful bow, and an outstretched hand, leading her to the center of the room where the dancers were taking their places, she reminded herself of the great value of foreplay. 

And yet, his mind seems elsewhere.

“My dear Doctor, you look troubled. Does the Allemande not suit you?" 

He’d been caught out, and Reinette was delighted to see a blush spread across the Doctor’s cheeks.

"Well… err… I was just thinking. Wondering really…”

He stalled a bit as they parted ways, returning to each others side, and intimate conversation for the promenade. The Doctor hemmed a bit before continuing where he left off.

“That eh… thing you did… with the Spanish chap… do human women typically like that sort of thing?”

Reinette stifled a giggle of satisfaction behind her fan before allowing him to twirl her around and pull her close. He was so sweet, it had almost certainly been the least scandalous of the memories she’d shown him. A stolen kiss in her guardian’s gardens when she was just fifteen. Poor Miguel had been besotted, but really hadn’t known what to do with it. 

“Why Doctor, you surprise me. Surely you’ve kissed a woman before.”

The Doctor gave a little hop as their bodies parted again, nodding eagerly.

“Oh yes, twice!” he tilted back his head furrowing his brow a bit in memory, “Although… I’m not really sure they count, I don’t think Rose remembers either.”

Reinette mentally thanked her twenty years of strenuous dance lessons, they were the only thing that kept her from stumbling.

“Only two kisses and both Rose? Why surely Doctor, you have not forgotten our kiss.”

She leaned in closer, resting a hand on his shoulder.

“I know I haven’t.”

They bowed as the dance ended and the Doctor nattered on as Reinette led him off the dance floor towards a deserted alcove she knew of.

“You know what? You’re right! And there was the kiss with Jack too. I’m quite the expert in kissing aren’t I?” 

He stroked a cocky hand through his hair, making it stick up in a way that truly should not be so becoming on a gentleman. But just as quickly, his previous virginal hesitancy returned as they neared the secluded corner. Reinette drew him close, he was nearly whispering now.

“I wanted to ask you about the kiss Reinette, because… that thing the boy was doing with his hips…”

Reinette pressed herself against the Doctor, he was tall, so tall. She rested her small hands against the silk of his rather slim cravat, gazing up at him with pursed lips. Against her stomach she could feel him pressed against her, long and hard. 

“With his hips? Oh you mean like this?”

She increased the pressure of her body on his length, grinding against him.

“Yes, rather. I was just wondering d-do you think… do you think Rose would like something like that?”

Reinette huffed in exasperation. How could he bring up that tart at a time like this! Her hand had dropped down to his trousers and she was stroking him lightly through his pants, his thick insistent interest in her attentions was more than evident and yet he was still talking about Rose!

The Doctor held her gaze as his own fingers lowered to reach into his pants and under hers, whipping out the object of her caresses.

He held it in front of her, long, slightly curved and yellow. Her eyes went wide in shock.

“Sorry Reinette… did you fancy my banana?”


	5. Through the Looking Glass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor has smashed through the mirror and Reinette is eager for more intimacy.

It was the same fireplace, but the flames were gone, the ashes cold. A lonesome whisper of wind wailed down the flue, scattering the dust and battering the cobwebs that littered the empty bookshelves of the once warmly lit retreat.   
Room after room stretched out in the Doctor’s mind, each empty, deserted. Once solid doors creaked on rusty busted up hinges. 

Reinette’s footsteps echoed through the empty halls. It had been easy to slip back into his mind once she knew where the door was. All it took was the brush of her hand and the stroke of his ego as she’d praised his bravery in rescuing her, how he’d ridden in on a white horse. The wine, a good strong port helped as it did with any man, to lower his defenses. 

She found him finally, alone in the furthest most room. His hair was shorn close and a black skin jacket wrapped around him. It was the coldest room of all, cliffs of ice towered overhead, waving and curling back down in vicious toothlike shards. The Doctor was crouched near a broken jagged hole. 

His voice when he spoke was flat and empty.

“She fell through… She saved me and I let her fall.”

Crystalline cliffs glittered in sharp forlorn beauty, forever frozen on the precipice, as if they would topple down and bury them both forever in ice. The bitter, infinite, unforgiving cold: Reinette could feel it’s greedy fingers creep along her spine. 

“Doctor, where are we?”

“Woman Wept. I took Rose here… but now I’ve lost her and I can’t get her back.”

Reinette put her hand on the Doctor’s shoulder, trying to pull him to a standing position, but jumped back at the first touch. He was as cold, colder than the room. She could feel it seeping up her arm, into her bones, towards her heart. 

“Doctor, come with me to one of the other rooms… we can try to start a fire.”

The Doctor just shook his head, eyes never leaving the icy crack in the floor. 

“No, you go… I think I’ll stay here.”

Feeling the relentless chill tightening around her chest, Reinette stumbled from the room, only stopping as her back rattled the door directly across the hall. 

Inside Reinette could see, finally, the frail yellow gleam of firelight. A peal of bitter laughter beckoned her as she stepped inside. 

The Doctor stood, his back to her, his shoulders bowed beneath a frayed courtly jacket as he grasped the handle of a door on the other side of the room.

In the center of the room laid out on a chaise she saw herself. 

“Where are you going?” her lips said.

The Doctor turned, he looked the same as he ever had, the same as he had when she’d slipped into his mind moments and years ago. Herself on the other hand, laying back on the narrow sofa, Reinette could make out every line, every hard year that had passed as if it had been carved on her face with a knife. 

Actually, the Doctor too had changed. In his bearing. He looked defeated.

“Does it matter where I’m going?”

His eyes skated all over the small cramped room, never once landing on her figure. A fact which escaped neither Reinette. From the couch she snapped at him.

“You can’t even look at me. I could have been with the King, you know.”

A knot of sap popped in the fire, casting the room in bright, harsh light for a moment before just as quickly fizzling and burning out. The Doctor snapped his eyes to her older self.

“You should have. You’re messing with history staying here.”

Wearily he ran his hands down his face. 

“I’m sorry Reinette. I just find the slow path a rough journey.”

Her face was cold, the light in her eyes long dead.

“You would have walked it for her.”


	6. Reinette Makes a Difficult Choice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reinette dies and the Doctor is devastated

The familiar, ever-present ticking of her bed-chamber clock was silent, and Reinette fancied, as she bent down to peer at the Doctor’s gleeful face, her heart for a moment stopped too. 

It almost seemed as if she could reach out and touch him, they were separated only by the small fire and three thousand years. 

“Go to the window. Pick a star… any star.”  
Her heart beating her chest once more Reinette raced to her bedroom window. The stars over Versailles gleamed like round while pearls against the velvet black of the night sky. 

The Queen had a necklace like that, Louis had presented it to her after the birth of their first daughter. And yet every night, Reinette mused, in this very chamber, the king tearfully professed his love to her.

The Doctor knew each of their names… and yet he knew so little of his own heart. The matte sparkle of evening frost gathered in the corners of the window pane. Reinette pressed her palm to the glass, felt it heat slowly from the warmth of her hand.

Faint happy laughter from another time echoed through the fireplace as Reinette sat at her small writing desk and removed a sheet of paper.

—

The Doctor walked slowly back to the Tardis, his shoulders braced against the cruel weight of history. Just a few short hours ago, he’d comforted Reinette as a child, she’d kissed him in the bloom of her womanhood, and now she was dead. 

Her life had passed so quickly, hardly a flicker in the universe’s eternal flame. She was human. 

Rose stood next to Mickey in the console room, her concern written across her face. 

“You alright?”

She gave an awkward little scratch of her cheek, for a moment seeming to hover on the verge of coming over to him and running away. He knew that precipice well.

He’d been filled with such hopefulness earlier. Before Reinette had entered his mind, he’d believed it was impossible to have that sort of connection with a human. He’d just assumed that the sweet brush of Rose’s soul he’d felt on the Gamestation, as he exploited their connection to draw Bad Wolf out of her, had been possible only due to the Time Vortex running through her head. It never occurred to him that his own telepathy would have been enough to open the link. 

But now, seeing Reinette fade so quickly, all the other reasons for keeping Rose at a distance fell suddenly, with a crushing weight, upon the Doctor’s shoulders.

How could he? How could he dare to be with her the way he truly wanted to, the way he sometimes almost let himself hope that she wanted too, when he was bound to lose her so soon.

Dejected, the Doctor opened Reinette’s letter to read her last words. He owed her that at least.

My Dear Doctor,

The path has never seemed more slow and yet I fear I am nearing it’s end. Reason tells me that you and I are unlikely to meet again, but I think I shall not listen to reason. I have seen the world inside your head and know that all things are possible. Hurry, hurry, though my love. My days grow shorter now and I am so very weak. Godspeed my lonely angel.

Lonely Angel? Honestly, the woman certainly had a flair for the dramatic. The Doctor tucked away the letter and, still thinking about Rose moved to the console to shut down the last time window and dematerialize from that cursed ship.

Dropping back into the jump-seat the Doctor let his head fall into his hands. Reinette had been in there, and it was best to make sure she hadn’t mucked anything up. 

Carefully striding through his own mind the Doctor followed the faint mental imprint of her footprints. 

Oooo, she’d been in that room… well that was awkward. Yeesh, that one too? Perhaps he should be a bit more careful about leaving his mental doors bolted. 

Tracing Reinette’s path the Doctor discovered himself in a small antechamber which he was surprised to discover he’d never seen before. There was an open doorway along the opposite wall but his view into the room was blocked by the spectral image of Reinette’s mental signature. 

Her back was to the Doctor as she peered into room in shock and resignation. For a moment, the Doctor almost fancied he heard her voice, an echo of the words from her letter that bounced and rang against the walls of his mind. 

“I have seen the world inside your head and know that all things are possible.”

The ghostly image faded and the Doctor gasped at the shining golden possibility it revealed.

—

King Louis XV, Monarch of the House of Bourbon, and Ruler of France and Navarre sighed as the Doctor stepped back behind the fireplace, leaving Versailles behind for good. With any luck he’d never have to see the man again.

Rubbing his brow he stepped towards a heavily draped window that looked out on the dreary, drizzly, day.

“You can come out now. He’s gone.”

Reinette poked her heavily bejeweled head out from between the folds of the curtain. 

“Do you think he bought it?”


	7. A Confession

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor finally tells Rose about his feelings for Reinette.

The Doctor fought the urge to run through the hallways of the Tardis, groaning when he found Rose finally in the library and still with Mickey. They were huddled together on one side of the wide plush sofa, their knees touching where they had angled them towards each other. 

“…I know what you’re thinkin’ Rose but believe me it’s never going to happen.”

The Doctor bristled. What had ever possessed him to bring that boy onboard? He bounded in with a purposefully loud stride, the harsh rattle of the Tardis grating echoing through the hushed room.

“Sorry Mickey but if you don’t mind I’d like to talk to Rose.”

Mickey raised his eyebrows, and his arm, resting it against the back of the sofa behind Rose as he shifted in his seat to face the Doctor. Other than that he didn’t move.

“Sorry but I do mind. Rose and me are talking.”

The Doctor huffed in exasperated condescension. 

“Look Mickey, I appreciate what you’re trying to do here, but I really do need to talk to Rose so if you can just budge I’m sure the Tardis can find you something to amuse yourself with. A ball of twine, or a milk bone maybe.”

Mickey just pressed his lips together, and Rose’s eyes narrowed. But when he glanced over at her Rose gave Mickey a slight nod and rested her hand on his shoulder.

“Just ignore him Mickey. He’s just going to keep at it until you go.”

Dropping a kiss to Rose’s cheek, Mickey’s eyes met the Doctor’s as he stormed out of the room. They were dark and furious. The door slammed behind him.

Rose sat on the couch her arms crossed and eyebrows raised. All of a sudden the Doctor realized he really had no idea what he was going to say to her. The last time she’d looked this angry he’d simply stormed off. 

The Doctor briefly wished for a small temporal paradox, so he could sacrifice himself to a reaper and she’d forgive him. I’d worked once.

Mercifully, Rose broke the tense, airless silence that had seemed to descend like darkness between them. 

“You’re gonna have to apologize to him you know.”

The Doctor ducked his head. Pushing Mickey’s buttons had probably not been a very good, or for that matter productive idea.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

Rose seemed surprised that he’d apologized so easily, but the tenseness of her posture didn’t loosen. 

“So what did you want to talk to me about then?”

The Doctor cleared his throat, unsure of quite how to proceed. Rose seemed so far away perched against the side of the couch. Should he go sit next to her? Would she want that? Somehow he’d pictured them closer during this conversation, a lot closer actually. 

“Well I don’t want to talk about it now.”

Rose threw her hands up in exasperation. She was almost yelling now, and for the first time the Doctor noticed that her eyes were puffy and red. 

“Then why did you even bother to come in here?” 

“No, I mean, you’re mad. I did want to talk about it, just not like this.”

Rose just looked at him for a second.

“Yeah, you’re right I am mad. I nearly got chopped up for spare parts back there and you just laughed it off like it was nothing– like I was nothing. I left everything to come traveling with you, the least you could do is pretend like you care whether I live or die.”

Rose was shaking now, tears she had been trying to hold back tumbling down her cheeks and the Doctor longed to go comfort her. It was hardly the first time an adventure had turned dangerous and Rose usually handled it fine, amazingly so, all things considered. Still, he reasoned, it must wear on her never knowing when she was going to be kidnapped by murderous monks or lecherous undertakers.

“An’ that’s not even the worst part. The worst part is I almost died for you Doctor, and you still made me feel like I was only second best.”

“Second best? Rose, how could you think that? Were you…” Realization slowly dawned on the Doctor, “were you jealous of Reinette?”

“No! You call her Reinette now? Jeez how long were you over there?”

His internal clock answered immediately.

“Eight hours, five minutes, and thirty-six seconds.”

Rose just shrugged her shoulders, her arms locked over her chest. The Doctor’s time sense began ticking off the seconds again as they lapsed into uncomfortable silence. He inched over and perched on the arm of the sofa opposite Rose.

“I was jealous.” he admitted.

Rose shook her head in confusion. Swiping the sleeve of her hoody at her cheek.

“What?" 

"I was jealous, of your father back in nineteen eighty-seven. It’s why I acted like such a jerk.” he confessed. 

“But that’s different Doctor, he was my Father, I wasn’t in love with him.”

He could tell by the look in her eyes that Rose’s tears washed away the better part of her fury. She’d never really had it in her to hold a grudge. But her voice was still shaking with emotion. The Doctor could feel it resonating in his own chest.

“And I… wait, do you think I was in love with Reinette?”

“Well aren’t you?”

She wasn’t even looking at him now, and the Doctor longed to take her face in both his hands, but settled for shifting down onto the seat next to her and tentatively stroking her hand with his index finger. Rose flinched a bit but didn’t pull her hand away.

“When I took you back and you found Pete I thought you’d replaced me. I thought you were going to leave me. It made me do stupid things.”

“Rose,” the Doctor hesitated for a minute, but really, even if she rejected him outright, at this point it was better than her thinking he had feelings for someone else. "I’ve never been in love before. If I were to go about this the way they did back home we’d both be bogged down in paperwork for centuries.“ 

Rose’s lips quirked and her eyes skittered to his face for a moment before dropping back to study their joined hands. 

"when I met Madame De Pompadour I was fascinated.” The Doctor admitted, barreling on. "I thought maybe I could learn from her… about humans.“

Rose heaved a deep breath.

"Doctor what are you…”

The Doctor closed his eyes, screwed up his courage and gently lifted Rose’s hands to his lips, depositing a kiss on the inside of each wrist. 

“I’m so afraid of doing this wrong Rose, I’ve tried to avoid doing it at all. But I can’t keep running like this. Rose. I’m in love with you.”


	8. Would she?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's all out in the open now.

A thick, unnatural quiet settled in the space between them, as if even the Tardis was still, rapt, waiting to see how Rose would respond. The Doctor could hear the in-out rush of Rose’s breath, the measured thrum of her heart pushing blood through her veins, clench-relax. Everything echoed with the ticking of a clock, the measured occilation of a metronome, the steady swing of fate’s pendulum back and forth.

Would she? Won’t she?  
The Doctor wanted to scream for the waiting. He wanted chaos, he wanted dissonance. A relationship between a human and a Time Lord was against every rule he’d ever been taught, and wanted her, desperately. He wanted their bodies moving artlessly to grasp, and take, and keep. He wanted teeth clattering against teeth. He wanted stumbling, and tripping, and heads bumping a little too hard against headboards, fracturing the moment with a wince of pain. 

And the Doctor wanted to race frantically on, past every imperfection, every awkwardness, every almost, and maybe, and if only. He wanted to cast them all aside and bury himself in Rose. 

The rhythm faltered, a long sustain, as Rose took a deep breath and spoke. 

“Well what did you learn?”

Her face was blank, completely inscrutable and the Doctor almost wondered if she’d caught his confession, if she realized his hearts were hanging on the meaning of her , frankly puzzling words.

“Sorry, what?” he said.

Rose tucked her knees underneath her on the couch, turning flush to face him, her hands still held in his.

“You said you wanted to learn about humans. What did you learn.”

The Doctor shook his head with a wry self-depricating grin. 

“Absolutely nothing.”

Rose gave him a soft, almost melancholy smile and for a moment the Doctor’s stomach plummeted as she tugged her fingers away from his hands. But she inched closer to him on the couch. They were almost chest to chest now, and if he pressed any closer he would be able to feel the racing, offbeat tremble of her sparrow heart against his.

She cupped his face in her hands, the pads of her thumb tracing his sideburns as if she were memorizing them by touch. He could feel her breath, a warm gentle breeze.

“Maybe you had the wrong teacher.”

Time stopped.

It actually stopped, for a moment or an eon, he would never be sure. But when it started again it exploded, the time streams ripe with possibilities. 

Rose’s lips were soft, and jam-sweet, her hips shifted on the couch to press close to his, but it was the feeling of her in his arms, finally, truly, not just for a brief hug or stolen caress that made him bury his face against her shoulder and take a deep shuddering breath. 

He never wanted to let her go. Maybe if he was very lucky, he wouldn’t have to.

Rose had a different thought, her lips, and tongue, and teeth on the shell of his ear.

“Touch me Doctor.”

He could do that. Any and everything she asked of him he could do. Her lips found his throat, and her fingers were in his hair, and her quiet hum of approval as he worked his way under her blue shirt was the most gorgeous sound in all of existence. Until the one she made next. 

The Doctor cupped her breasts through the thin lace and silk layer of her bra and Rose moaned soft and low. He rolled his hips, for the first time allowing his guard to drop, allowing her to feel his need for her, aching and thick. She nipped his bottom lip playfully through her wide smile, reminding him of all the joyous, tortuous times her teeth had captured her own tongue. 

Action and response, cause and effect, The Doctor was quickly learning what moves made Rose giggle in delight, and which made her whimper with lust and need. Rose was right. She really was an awfully good teacher.

Rose’s brilliant fingers worked their way down his chest to cup and press against his aching, long deprived Gallifreyan physiology and he realized she was awfully good at a lot of things. 

He also realized, with a bewildered, awe-struck surety, she wasn’t going to stop. 

The Doctor pulled back from Rose, even as his lips staged a minor revolution to stay connected to hers. It hurt, parting from her even a little: the warm affectionate hum of her mind catching on the lonely contact starved tendrils of his like burrs on a sweater. 

He’d forged a surface connection without even realizing it.

Rose looked at him, eyes wide and questioning, and he could see clearly she was wondering if she should be hurt, rejected. The Doctor just smiled shyly and pressed his hand softly where it rested against her heart. 

“Rose are we… I mean, did you want to have… coitus?” the Doctor winced a bit at his choice of words, but barreled on, “… with me I mean, now? Here?”

Rose sat back on her heels, hands dropping to stroke tentative circles on his pinstripe clad knee. She chewed her lip a bit but held his gaze. He could see her chest heaving beneath her rumpled shirt and oh, was he proud of that.

“We can right? I mean physically, I don’t really know any more about Time Lords than you know about humans.” Rose considered for a moment. “Less actually.”

Her lash fringed eyes flickered down to where he was still half hard and wanting and the Doctor grinned as she blushed. There were goosebumps on Rose’s skin and part of him, the long repressed part of his brain that had carried him this far, wanted to push her back on the sofa and memorize their constellations with his tongue. 

But she needed to know what this meant.

“We’re compatible.” The Doctor said, licking his lips. His mouth was cotton dry. “When I say compatible I mean physically, reproduction might take a little err… tinkering.”

Rose raised her eyebrows at that but seemed contend to file it away. She gave his knee a squeeze and the Doctor took it as her urging him to continue. 

He could feel it again, the way the roaring thunder of the ocean echoes the pounding roll of it’s motion. Her mind was just out of reach, and he vowed to keep it that way until she understood truly what this meant between them, but he could feel it there radiating acceptance and encouragement.

“It’s not just that though, there’s a mental aspect too. I’m a telepath Rose, when I touch someone like this” gingerly he raised his fingertips to her temple, careful to keep his mind politely behind his barriers no matter how desperately he longed to surge forward. "I can go inside their mind.“

Rose nodded, her face neutral, and hastily the Doctor removed his fingers from her face, avoiding the temptation to peek inside and see what she thought of all this.

"I was holding myself back just then, but when we’re ah… together, I won’t be able to. And once I forge the connection it goes both ways…apparently.”

Rose tilted her head at him inquisitively. "What do you mean ‘apparently’?“

Damn. Leave it to Rose not to miss the important details. The Doctor rubbed the back of his neck, blushing and stammering to find the right words.

"Oh right!” it came out a little too loud and he tried again. “Back when I… with Reinette, Madame de Pompadour I mean, the robots were in her head and I really had to see what was going on… really, truly, it didn’t mean anything Rose… I didn’t think it was even possible… and I’m glad, so glad it is because now you and I… but that’s not the point… I really didn’t mean to, but she sort of…”

Rose huffed in exasperation and the Doctor realized he was rambling.

“Oh my God, what Doctor?”

“She sort of went inside my head. Just a bit.”

For a brief awful moment Rose just stared at him, mouth open, an angry red blush rising from her collar, and then everything came crashing down. Rose dropped her face in her hands and the Doctor watched in horror as her shoulders began to shake.

“Rose, oh, no, no, no. It meant nothing, really nothing. Just like when she kissed me.” Double damn, he hadn’t mentioned that either had he? Rose’s back shook harder with convulsive heaves. “She just caught me by surprise, both times. I swear.”

The Doctor touched a hand to Rose’s arm, wishing he could hold her again, wishing he had listened to instinct and forgone talk and explanation. Finally she looked up at him her eyes red with tears and a wide mirthful grin on her lips.

She was laughing.

“Life with you really is crazy Doctor. I feel like you just confessed cheating on me in a way I didn’t even know existed a moment ago.”

The Doctor hung his head, unsure of how to feel. Rose seemed to be taking it alright after all, but he was well and truly ashamed. Gently Rose lifted his chin with her finger.

“Did you mean what you said earlier? About how you feel about me.”

Her eyes, shone dark and deep. Hope and tenderness balanced on the knife edge of her voice. He threaded his fingers through hers, answered her with the only truth that seemed to matter in his 900 years of his existence. 

“Rose, I’ve been in love with you from the moment I met you, and I will be until my last breath escapes me." 

She smiled at him, starlight dancing in her eyes.

"Doctor, I trusted you with my life already, yeah? I trust you with my heart too.”

He’d been trying to hold back, but how could he not capture her lips at that? Her words passed between them, as much a shining golden promise as the energy of the vortex had a regeneration ago, and thousands of years in the future.

“I love you too.”


	9. Burning it Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A choice is made and things are resolved for better or worse.

Feather soft, the Doctor trailed his fingers along the inner aspect of Rose’s arm, just letting his mind tease the edges of hers. She’d said she loved him. Everything confirmed it. Her mind radiated love, and acceptance. The twin suns of her eyes shone at him with springtime warmth.

But there was still one more thing they needed settled.

“There’s something else Rose, what I came in here to talk to you about actually, but I don’t want you to think that’s what prompted this. I mean it did sort of,” he corrected himself “but not really, I guess it gave me hope that you and I might… but I don’t want you to feel any pressure, it’s not a condition or anything.”

Rose stilled his blathering with a squeeze of her hand.

“I trust you, remember? What is it?”

The Doctor sucked in a deep unnecessary breath.

“You remember what I said to you before? How you could stay with me for the rest of your life?” Rose nodded, her eyes darkening a bit with the memory. "Well you can do that, you still can, I’d love it. But what if…"

The Doctor trailed off, pressing his tongue behind his teeth and focusing on a empty patch of space just over Rose’s left shoulder. He had to phrase this just right, so much was riding on it.

Rose wrinkled her brow.

“What Doctor?”

“What if you could stay with me… forever?”  
Rose inched closer, resting her hand on his shoulder, her voice conciliatory and compassionate.

“I will, of course I will. You should know that.”

The Doctor just shook his head. She didn’t understand.

“No, here, it’s easier to just show you.” He raised his fingers tentatively up to her temple, waiting for her to give him a quick nod before he made contact. "Don’t worry, I’ll be a complete gentleman. No peeking under your mental skirts so to speak.“

Rose raised an eyebrow dubiously and he gave her a wide cheeky grin. 

"Well not yet anyway.”

—

Rose scrunched her eyes closed and waited for the Doctor to do his mind thingie and show her whatever it was he’d been babbling on about. She imagined it would be sort of a shock, having someone in her brain for the first time, like jumping feet first into cold water. 

Or maybe, she mused, it would be more like that one time her and Shireen had both tried to squeeze into the same sleeping bag, all giggles and awkward elbows.

A gentle hand tapped her shoulder from behind and she yelped in surprise, spinning around and gaping at the Doctor behind her. He bounced on his trainers and smiled, waggling his fingers at her.

“Hello.”

Hadn’t he been just… wait a minute, where was she? Rose scanned the grey, familiar landscape.

“Doctor, this is… we’re at the estate!”

The Doctor tugged his ear as he looked around as well. If he was trying to hide his excitement he was doing a very poor job. Something about his affect reminded her of how Mickey had acted the first time she let him under the shirt over the bra.

The Doctor’s expression changed to mock offense.

“Now Rose Tyler that’s just rude! First time I’m in your mind and you’re thinking about Mr. Mickey.”

Suddenly it all clicked into place. They were in her mind. The Doctor giggled then winced as she smacked him playfully. 

“Alright then, what did you want to show me?”

The Doctor stilled his giddy bouncing and gestured over to the small playground across the central courtyard of the estate. It was a place she’d visited often in her childhood. Rose remembered one time when she was seven, she’d fallen off her bike and nearly knocked a tooth out. Her mum had completely freaked out when she’d come home crying, bloodstains covering the front of her shirt.

“It’s over there, I’ll wait.”

The air was completely still as Rose made her way across the empty estate.

As she neared the playground a shrill rhythmic squeak pierced the silence. There, settled in the sand was a large golden box. It was pretty really, in a sort of functional way, looping, swirled engravings covered it’s metal surface. On top of it, glowing even in the mid-day sun, was a single red button. 

But the box, lovely and puzzling as it was, was not what arrested Rose’s attention. Because there, rocking back and forth on the swing-set, wearing a tattered white dress and a manic smile, was herself.

It wasn’t though, Rose realized. There was something in the way her double swung herself, childlike, on the swing that was off. There was a golden hint of crazy in her eyes. 

The image nodded to the box in the sands, grinning wolfishly and Rose was struck with a sudden sense of de-ja-vu. 

“Alright, what is it then?” she asked.

The Rose on the swings tilted her head to one side. "It’s a choice silly, what else would a big red button be?“

She hopped off the swing and skipped over to Rose, hands tucked behind her back, kicking up the sand as she went. When she was only a few inches away the double stopped, peering fascinated into Rose’s eyes. 

"Don’t you remember?”

And suddenly, in the glint of a moment, Rose did. A flashing series of interspersed images, tangled together like old twine. A promise, a white wall, the damp sands of a lonely stretch of beach, a hand to hold, a human heart, a life and love, or… or, there was another way. Golden threads of time trembled in Rose’s memory, the dead weight of stars on her shoulders, a burden made lighter, shared by two. It made sense now, what the Doctor had said. Forever.

Rose’s face was smirking back at her.

“It really isn’t a choice at all, is it?”

—

The Doctor’s fingers shook against Rose’s temples. He’d started out intending the gesture to be purely clinical, but there was no point denying it was a caress at this point. He cupped her cheek as he withdrew from her mind, leaving the slightest tendril of connection between them because… oh, how could he not?

She opened her eyes, batted them a few times, scratched her scalp with her right hand.

“I don’t feel any different.”

900 years and the Doctor had seen so many sunsets, so many births, he’d seen flowers in the riot of spring, and the flaming, livid leaves of autumn on hundreds and hundreds of planets, and nothing, nothing had ever taken his breath away like this.

“I don’t think you are." And was that him sounding so breathless? "I think it was always meant to be like this.”

It was always meant to be like this, the way Rose’s lips fizzled like firecrackers against his own. He was hungry for her skin, her touch, hungry for her mind as it slipped like silk against his. 

The Doctor knew he was awkward, all thumbs, it had been so long since he’d had a connection this intimate and never one that was both mental, and physical. But his hearts were dancing a polka in his chest because he also knew it didn’t matter. 

He fumbled, clumsy with the stubborn clasp of her bra and Rose giggled. Her riotous, joyful laughter bubbling between them, only adding to the rolling boil of their passion. 

Somewhere in the cavernous empty halls of the Doctor’s mind, an ember caught in a fireplace. Heat flickered.

Threading her fingers through his hair, Rose rocked her hips against his and the Doctor groaned. His cock was stiff and aching in his too tight trousers, but it would have to wait. 

Slipping into Rose’s mind wasn’t like reading her thoughts off a teleprompter, it wasn’t like looking through her eyes as if they were the lens of a camera, and it absolutely was nothing like the sterile, solitary walk down the halls of his thoughts that Reinette had taken.

(And oh, he couldn’t help chuckling to himself as Rose mentally scolded him for thinking of Reinette at such a time, throwing his own chastising over her slip with Micky back in his psychic face.)

Being inside Rose’s mind was like slowly walking into a warm summer lake. He could feel her all around him, the gentle roll of her emotions and passions, the caress of her thoughts against his. But it was her love for him, hot, steady and utterly undeniable that had him gasping at her neck and ripping at her clothes.

The fire caught. long tongues of flame burning through the room, climbing the ancient stacks of dusty books like a trellis. The corridor of the Doctor’s thoughts, so recently cold and empty flickered orange and scarlet as the smokeless blaze spread from room to room, ever building, ever reaching to burst through the rafters of his mind.

Rose arched against him, undoing his oxford and lifting up his vest top to feel the skin of his stomach sliding against hers before moving down to work on his trousers. He could feel her heart pounding; he could feel her laughter against his lips, the sweetest joy he’d ever tasted. 

She was naked in his arms now and so was he, and it felt like a miracle. One in a line of so many his beautiful golden girl had brought into his life. She moved against him, and he moved into her and they both stilled, forehead to forehead to mark the moment.

But then it got too much, too serious, too not them, and Rose tickled him under his arms with a mental nudge to ‘get moving’, and he bucked against her playfully in revenge.

And she gasped, so he did it again. She groaned, fisting her fingers in her own hair and it was all over. They were flying. 

Halls and rooms, walls and ceilings it was all white hot. The Doctor’s brain burned incandescent with love and lust, passion and pride for the gorgeous wonderful woman who was inexplicably his.

He lowered his lips to her collar nipping and sucking against her pulse. 

She was his. 

Her nails were at his back, and her teeth dug into her lower lip. He rocked and thrust dropping a hand to where they were joined to caress her, to tease her. To break her. 

She broke, clenching and crying out for him to follow her. 

He always would. Forever.

The inferno reached it’s peak, doors buckled and broke in the flames, the rafters collapsed. The walls of the Doctor’s mind blackened to char, burned to dust and floated away in the night breeze. 

All that was left was the black-blue sky, and Rose. She took his hand, laid him down, and together they stared up at the glittering stars.


End file.
